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Tomb raiders strip Bulgaria of its treasuresBy Malcolm Moore in Sofia

Last Updated: 2:54am BST 31/08/2007Among the paperclips in the bottom drawer of a desk in Bulgaria's National History Museum is a smallcardboard box packed with 5,000-year-old gold rings. In pictures: Bulgaria's stolen art"We found 25,000 of them when we went into a grocery shop a couple of months ago," said SvetlaTsaneva-Dimitrova, the head of the museum's restoration team."A farmer's wife was wearing them as a necklace. Herhusband had just dug them up in a field nearby. As you canimagine, we were stunned."Each tiny gold ring is 23-carat gold, but nobody knows howthey were crafted."Modern jewellers cannot make these things without amagnifying glass," said Miss Tsaneva-Dimitrova, adding thatsimilar rings were discovered at Troy.Found at the same time was a small 20-carat gold daggerfrom 3,000BC that is "still so sharp you can shave with it."Priceless antiques are strewn all over the chaoticlaboratory, as restorers are hard at work on a pair of bronze greaves, or leg armour,engraved with the image of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom.Bulgaria, which was once part of Ancient Thrace, ranks behind only Italy and Greece in Europe interms of the numbers of antiquities lying in its soil.The Thracians, who included Spartacus and Orpheus, had a highly advanced civilisation and foughtwith Alexander the Great on his expedition to Asia. Later, the country was ruled by the Romans,Persians, Byzantines and Turks, all of whom left a rich array of treasure behind.However, since the collapse of the Soviet empire, little attention has been paid to Bulgaria's culturalheritage.Although the law states that all archaeological finds belong to the state, much is being smuggledabroad.Tens of thousands of tomb raiders are systematically stripping Bulgaria. In some parts of the country,whole villages have taken up tomb-raiding and many of the digs are organised by the local mafia.Volodia Velkov, the head of the police unit that combats organised crime, said tomb-raiding was nowgenerating about £4 billion a year for the crime syndicates.Mr Velkov and a team of 30 officers are trying to track looted antiquities and stop them leaving thecountry.

A Thracian artefact from about 300BC

advertisementPage1of29/3/2007http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/29/wb...id4775096 pdfMachine by Broadgun Software - a great PDF writer! - a great PDF creator! - http://www.pdfmachine.com http://www.broadgun.comInformation appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited andmust not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement seeCopyright"Since last October, when we started the new department, we have seized 16,000 artefacts," he said.

"More than 30,000 people are involved in tomb-raiding. The business is very well-organized and theexpeditions are financed by rich Bulgarians living in the US, Britain and Germany."Last Friday, a 43-year-old man was caught trying to smuggle more than 100 items into Germany inspecial compartments within the floor of a lorry. Police found antiquities dating back to 300BC, worth£345,000."The main route is through Germany, where there are huge warehouses full of our antiquities," saidMr Velkov.Miss Tsaneva-Dimitrova said her country was losing the battle: "Some of my former colleagues arenow working for treasure hunters."They have better equipment than us. Recently we found traces at a site of a military diggingmachine, of which there are only two in the country," she said.The treasures can easily be found in the hands of foreign antiques dealers and on the internet.Yesterday, several Thracian items were available on eBay, the internet auction site.Last November, Christie's in London was forced to withdraw a Byzantine plate after a complaint fromthe Bulgarian government. It was claimed that the silver plate, had been found in 1903, but it wasactually dug up in 1999, according to Naiden Blagnev, a treasure hunter.Some commentators believe the only way to stop the looting is for the Bulgarian government tolicence private collectors.One advocate of this is Nikolai Ovcharov, a leading archaeologist who recently discovered the ancientaltar of Dionysusat Perperikon, where Alexander the Great consulted the oracle before his expeditionto Asia."The government cannot afford to excavate all the sites itself," he said. "So they should give outconcessions and carry out rigorous checks on what is found. The longer it takes to pass a new law,the more treasure we will lose."Page2of29/3/2007http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/29/wb...